Retail Watchers

https://komonews.com/news/nation-world/ ... ng-company

Le Tote, a company that rents clothing on a subscription basis, is buying Lord and Taylor for $100 million. It sounds like Hudson's Bay will continue to operate the remaining stores, at least for the time being.

A relatively unknown company out of San Francisco buying Lord & Taylor for a huge sum seems pretty far-fetched, and an even bigger question is how that can be integrated with their existing model. It sounds more like HBC is making an investment in Le Tote.

At this point it looks like HBC just wants to get rid of this thing...

What is the positioning of this chain? I am curious why Macy's didn't keep it or convert the stores to Bloomingdales back in 2005. Unless they used it as an asset to sell off to get some extra cash back then... Is it somehow in between where a Macy's and Bloomingdales sit?

If I recall, at the time, Lord and Taylor was suffering under May Company with poor merchandising, at least in several locations, and the concept was probably the "upscale" store to the May Company brands (in theory, anyway). As to why May didn't convert it, Macy's has always been pretty touchy where Bloomingdale's was and wasn't going to go (they didn't even have a Texas store) and converting Lord & Taylor to Bloomingdale's would have put Bloomingdale's in some comparatively middle class markets. Furthermore, Federated had only experimented with Macy's rebrandings in the past, not touching Bloomingdale's. My guess is that while Federated cited success in the converting of acquired divisions to Macy's (Stern's, Liberty House, Bon Marché, etc.), the conversions from The Broadway to Bloomingdale's was not doing nearly as well as Macy's wanted, and essentially put the brakes on expanding the brand.

They probably did dispose of it shortly before the conversion of the May Co. brands (2006) to raise money for the conversions.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lord ... SKBN22H2SJ

Looks like Coronavirus did them in. All Lord and Taylor stores will be liquidating as soon as they are able to reopen.

That's very sad, but selling it to an obscure clothing rental company doomed the company, even if they did revert the logo.

Yeah, Lord & Taylor's problems go back to May's acquisition of ADS. May has always been a heavily promotional lower middle brow operation, although they had jettisoned the bargain basements and trading stamps by then, they were heavily into weekend "sales". Rather than leaving L&T alone, they expanded it into markets where it had no history like Memphis, did more promotions, and redid their stores in a style indistinguishable from May stores, diluting the brand. The chain has never really recovered even though later owners got rid of the marginal locations and refocused on core markets.

buckguy wrote: ↑May 7th, 2020, 5:27 am Yeah, Lord & Taylor's problems go back to May's acquisition of ADS. May has always been a heavily promotional lower middle brow operation, although they had jettisoned the bargain basements and trading stamps by then, they were heavily into weekend "sales". Rather than leaving L&T alone, they expanded it into markets where it had no history like Memphis, did more promotions, and redid their stores in a style indistinguishable from May stores, diluting the brand. The chain has never really recovered even though later owners got rid of the marginal locations and refocused on core markets.

So true!

Macy's expansion and merger activity did the same thing to the Macy's image of New York and San Francisco. It diluted the brand to almost nothing. Locations that Macy's should NEVER have been at.

veteran+ wrote: ↑May 7th, 2020, 5:51 am

buckguy wrote: ↑May 7th, 2020, 5:27 am Yeah, Lord & Taylor's problems go back to May's acquisition of ADS. May has always been a heavily promotional lower middle brow operation, although they had jettisoned the bargain basements and trading stamps by then, they were heavily into weekend "sales". Rather than leaving L&T alone, they expanded it into markets where it had no history like Memphis, did more promotions, and redid their stores in a style indistinguishable from May stores, diluting the brand. The chain has never really recovered even though later owners got rid of the marginal locations and refocused on core markets.

So true!

Macy's expansion and merger activity did the same thing to the Macy's image of New York and San Francisco. It diluted the brand to almost nothing. Locations that Macy's should NEVER have been at.

In a way maybe they should have kept the regional nameplates and run the stores at different tiers. It might have been more work but they wouldn't have had to dilute the more premium brand in the more premium markets.

arizonaguy wrote: ↑May 7th, 2020, 9:29 am

veteran+ wrote: ↑May 7th, 2020, 5:51 am So true!

Macy's expansion and merger activity did the same thing to the Macy's image of New York and San Francisco. It diluted the brand to almost nothing. Locations that Macy's should NEVER have been at.

In a way maybe they should have kept the regional nameplates and run the stores at different tiers. It might have been more work but they wouldn't have had to dilute the more premium brand in the more premium markets.

Might have also helped in those areas where they were already and bought out other chains, by leaving them the option to have some stores in different "levels" rather than so many of one, which made all of them not do as well by spreading customers out.